1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sewing system, and more particularly, it relates to a sewing system for sewing workpieces into tubular shapes.
2. Description of Related Art
In the sewing industry, it is often necessary to sew a workpiece into a tubular or closed loop shape. To create this tubular shape, two opposing edges of the workpiece would be joined together by overlapping one edge of one side of the workpiece over an edge of the opposing side of the workpiece. The edges of the workpiece would be sewn by hand or manually guided into a sewing machine. After the workpiece was manually guided into the sewing machine, a needle would penetrate both edges of the workpiece so that the two edges were stitched together. Handling the workpiece was often difficult, time consuming, inefficient, and cumbersome. The use of a conventional sewing machine was usually not practical in areas where the stitching to be sewn had to be accurate in its alignment with the edges of the workpiece, even though guides were used on the sewing machines. With the processes of the prior art, manual skill is still required to insert the workpiece and to position it correctly in the sewing machine. In addition, because the operator had to manually feed the workpiece, the operator could typically only sew one workpiece at a time. Thus, sewing each workpiece required the complete attention of the operator which is time consuming and expensive.
There is, therefore, a need to provide a seaming system which accurately sews two edges of a workpiece together and which also permits an operator to load and clamp one workpiece at a sewing station while a second workpiece is being sewn.